


Impasse

by joouheika



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4261215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joouheika/pseuds/joouheika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Black nor white holds the weight of gold. [Brilliant AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impasse

He is running.

It had been ordered of him, of all of them.

To lay their lives down in this battle for the sake of a King, a Lord, a Master that had bought them. So the citizens of this nation that is not their own will not have to die, they have been sold and bought, and sent to fight in their stead. They are property.

They are slaves.

He has spent this life, giving it up to another. Serving another than himself. This right taken from him. Doing tasks those of higher position than the general populace may find unsightly to themselves- cleaning, cooking, washing- various errands they themselves never seem able to do- as he grew older- it was hard labor in the fields, heavy labor in the mines, dirty work for whoever owns him at the time, tells him to do. The town he’d been brought up in had been invaded, sacked by another, and to the ruling he and many others like him had been taken. To toil and be tested in the coliseums. There only one rule stood true.

The strong survive.

They fought and killed, or fought and were killed.

Those who won lived another day.

And were chosen for this.

War.

But this place, the battlefield of war is not unlike the coliseum to him.

Here it is just the same.

The strong live and the weak die.

Though if they live to the end of this battle, they will merely be sent to fight in another until they are killed…

Even if that is so.

Even if he is without a name, without freedom, without any will of his own- still he knows one thing.

From the pounding, beating in his breast.

He does not want to die just yet.

So he will use any means.

To survive this.

He has been given a sword, which is more than some others, and less than some others who carry shield or wear chainmail. But that matters not, when the foe comes to him, he meets them and cuts them down. Not caring where and how the blood spills. It is everywhere. They die left and right. They naught the weapons, the armor, the horses on which many are rode over and cut down from. They who naught the physical means or the wits to hold their own. 

The blood spills thick and hot over the ground, leaping up into the air just as red as the setting sun. They struggle, and not many will survive this, they will have done as they were told, they will all die as had been asked of them. All that is expected of them and the worth of the sum that'd been used to buy them.

But not yet he thinks, not yet to him.

He is not ready to give up.

Even if he must enter this hell once more on the behest of a ruler he does not know. Even if he is captured by the enemy that sets to slay him now, tomorrow he may be running across the opposite side of this field, doing all the same. Repeating it.

It cannot be helped.

The world is like this, dark, as the night that descends.

But the night is not as dark as they think it to be and it is not because the stars are out.

It comes.

Overhead from their way.

Its shadow stretches vast over them and towards the soldiers that kill them.

Some scream in terror. Some cry. Some pray. 

They are all running. No exceptions. All of them, away, away, away they are trying to get from that which is hangs above them, that which is more fearsome, more terrifying, more horrific than that which they have ever seen in all their lives.

It swoops low and bellows out, bright-

Scorching.

Fire.

Not just any fire.

Hotter than the flames in a hearth, the hearts of the mountains, akin to the sun- 

It is dragon’s fire.

A monster, the god of death, a creature knights and kings were once able to kill. But that must only be in lore, for one appears before them. Killing devastatingly, without discrimination, without mercy, like an anvil of justice, a herald of fate.

Fire rushes past him, burning all that it sets ablaze. Charring the fields and setting alight the trees of the woods far from them. Melting in their armor and the armor alike, warriors and novices, slaves and people.

Fear desecrates the battlefield as it had not before, equal they should all be in it.

He is not afraid.

Because he is not human either.

Neither is he a slave at this moment.

He does not know what he is but-

That beating in his chest will rupture and disperse should he be granted this. That which he has never felt before. That which he has never allowed himself to wish, for it will never come true. Any desires, any hopes, any dreams. What use are they to he, who is not a person?

Then that which is before him, that strikes such anguish into those around him, is more akin to him than any person, any slave, he has ever encountered.

The dragon is strong.

And it is something else.

As it flies high above them, swooping down low now and then, toying with them, annihilating them, he knows it to be something else.

It is free.

With sword in hand, perhaps not the one he started with but one sharper, larger, he pulled out from a corpse or stole from the hand of one weaker than he at some point. He runs.

It is resonating, echoing, thriving, this wish he has never had, this ambition he has never cultivated, this dream he has never seen.

If he should die right afterwards of its gain, that is fine.

He does this not for glory, not for recognition, or any fame.

Should he slay this dragon that will mean he will be stronger than it. This being that is stronger than any knight, more powerful than any king. Should he slay this monster, a monster himself, he will gain what it is he has not had his whole life.

Freedom.

Those wings that flap and soar, are his wings of freedom.

He will slay this dragon.

It is through rising, black smoke, and grey ash. The heat of the flames, red and blue that he runs around and through, a rag tied over his face, ducking low to the ground. 

Stepping over, upon bodies, some long dead, some dying, some living. He will not fall as they did. Not when he must do this.

Greater than this duty that should not have been his, greater than this life that has never been anything.

He runs and spares to catch one breath, in this dense and unforgiving heat only when he sees it. Not the shadow overhead but its descent. Its landing as it sets to scorch any that remain, straight on. To rip in its claws and with its teeth those unfortunate to be close where it has finally set to be on the ground. It is destruction, it is chaos, it will not forgive any of them.

Why it has come now, at this time, as if set on killing every single one of them.

He doesn’t know.

But he does know this.

With how close he has come to it-

Steel hits against the lashed out tail, blocking its strike from smashing his skull in. Though no bones break from the blow, he is pushed back, the ground breaking beneath him a few feet as he repels the dragon.

Another.

Again.

He dodges a few strikes before reflecting another, then running when not another comes. Fire follows, at his heels and burning some of this clothes, that rag falls from his face as he rolls on the ground to extinguish the flames. The corpses that trailed and heaped before him on his way here, burnt to nothing, husks, scattered and few, all destroyed by the beast before him. The smell of burning flesh, rancid and crisp, the smoke is choking.

He stands. The fetters about his legs, the shackles about his arms- hot, but the chains are long. He meets with the hot and burning steel claw and teeth of equal measure as the dragon rears back and rushes forth, snapping at him, a few times, not as quick as it could have been… as if it were playing with him…

The game is over when he manages after avoiding another rush of dragon’s fire, dragon’s breath, to take up a sword that is not as easily broken, not breaking any scales but clashing harder than usual against them, his strength unrelenting, the steel sharper and better made. He sees just maybe in the reflecting light of the flames, on those what can only be described as beautiful, those scales of green and blue, blue and green, deeper in shade than the waters of the ocean, and lighter than the endless skies as fire rolls off from them- he has landed a scratch or two.

It riles hope within him.

He does not recognise it.

And he hurries, to the nearest tree yet to catch in this fire in this heat, amazing, a miracle, allowed perhaps, for it’d been a game before- to run up it he jumps, flies into the air, onto the rubble of wagons, horses, the dead, cannon and stock that had blown some of them to pieces before. Using it as a means to bring him higher, closer. To the dragon- he leaps over and upon its back-

He strikes his sword down.

It does not cut, and it does not hit flesh, but as the dragon tries to avoid his landing, his blade. The sword becomes stuck between the scales and anchoring him there, he is stuck. Even as the dragon takes flight, up into the night air it twirls and swirls, gliding across the destruction it had wrought, over this battlefield, along the mountains, across the thick dense woods its fire had yet to spread across, not managing to toss him off until it flies over a vast lake.

Into its undisturbed depths, clear and reflective of the moonlight and soon the bright of dragon flame, he is plunged into, his sword still stuck on the dragon’s scales but he himself having lost his grip.

He swims to the surface, walking out from it as he reaches the shallows, dripping, the water pouring off him, soon turned to steam by the rapid rising flames around him. Those flames turning to smoke and billowing pillars of it as the dragon stands before him, not in the air any longer. It draws its wings back as if to take flight but does not, instead sending out a gust that drives him to his knees. Putting out many of the flames itself had lit. 

Even without sword, he rises to fight.

The blade is on the beast’s back.

He will just have to make it there again and pull the blade out.

As he moves, the dragon’s teeth missing him again as he makes it too close- another tree he runs up to leap on the dragon’s back, drawing that sword and dragging it down scales, beneath the belly. Though it does no actual damage, not cutting, thus not yielding a bleeding wound. It is no longer a game. A distance between them managed. Closed.

Drawing the sword into a backhanded grip, he crouches, rushing forth to meet the dragon head on, taking its blows and dealing some back. That tail lashing out more ferociously than before, those sharp teeth, as if a hundred swords coming ever closer- snapping, he waits.

He bides.

He expects.

Dragon flame.

But none comes, none sets him alight.

Not when he is already afire with purpose.

The hope within him growing ever more, a beacon, a monster. Bigger and stronger. Faster and smarter.

He will overcome the kings that had sent them to die, the people that had used them, this world that had forsaken them.

He will become free by his own hands.

By the wings of this beast.

It will not be a dream.

But reality in the morning light, the dawn of a day he has never known.

It is the light of dragon fire that he sees again, scorching behind him as he is driven back to the shore of the otherwise peaceful lake, before they arrived.

Two monsters.

The flame about him is near extinguished again by a few flaps of those magnificent wings, drawn back as the dragon rears back and lowers its head, looking right at him. Also crouching as he before it. This will be the end. He will either die by fire or drive this sword into its head, its mouth, an eye. A pair of eyes look upon him, as if contemplating, calculating, seeking. Ambitious. Unforgiving as before. And still, looking back into them he cannot help himself from thinking, the beating of his heart a low, torturous throb-

Beautiful.

They are the most beautiful eyes he has ever seen.

A brilliant gold that outshines the sun, the crown of any King or Queen, any gold that is to be had within the mountains yet to be soiled by the greed of men.

It is a captivating, honest gaze, one might not expect from a dragon or any beast... yet one can only expect from such, the untamable and unobtainable.

For a second.

For a moment.

One that will probably cost him his life.

He hesitates before such a sight.

But he does not regret.

For never has he, nor ever will he behold anything like those golden eyes in this world again. If they are in the next, or whatever a place that someone like he, who is not human go, when they die- then he will have known mercy for the first time.

This gaze binds him, and bids him that while it’d been his wish to begin with, to run. To conquer, To succeed. To place this bet.

He is running.

He will die or he will live.

There is a snap and the breaking of metal.

The chains about his hands are smashed, as a tail had lashed out to hack through them. His sword that falls from his grip, cuts through into the chains at his feet.

Upon his knee he has fallen.

His hands and legs free for what is the first time in his memory. He looks upon them. He cannot dare take up sword, not to the one who has liberated him, this-

A mouth moves and he cannot believe it is not to tear him apart; yet that is fact and he must accept it.

The voice he hears is not the deep, growling treble he’d expected of this creature but rather one like that of a young adolescent, but he does not let it fool him into thinking the dragon to have fewer years than he.

The dragon asks of him, it moving its head back as if to regard him, those scales glossy and dark and light all at once-

“Tell me. Human. What is your name?”

He remains as he is.

He does not stand for-

“…I have no name.”

The look he receives is one he’d never thought to see from a dragon, mild confusion and then a composure cold and affronted- such composure shattered on the huffy words that leave the dragon next, as if it may have a tantrum. 

“Just tell me already! Or do you think me a fool? How is it that you have no name?”

He responds, with the coldness of truth.

“I am a slave. Property. A tool to be used. It is seen to be of no need to give one such as I a name.”

A silence drifts and parts between them, as the flowing wind, the ripples across the lake.

The dragon speaks to him once more after much thought. It appears... sadden by what he has said.

“Then I shall give you a name.”

The dragon shifts, a tilt of its head, as if to think of a name, looking him over, then turning away.

Within seconds that feel to be hours and an instant all in one-

The dragon bestows upon him a name.

“Levi. From henceforth your name is Levi. You are a slave no more, that which can be named is free.”

He tests it out.

“Levi?” he asks, tasting the syllables, honing in on them, given them to him by a fellow beast, it can only be his own.

This name is his.

This freedom is-

“Do you like it? Does it not please you? Shall I choose another?”

He thinks.

Levi replies.

“Not bad.”

The dragon looks an awful more pleased with itself than Levi think it should have been, puffing its chest out proudly, its wings giving a slight flutter, and was its tail wagging?

“Then… Sir Levi. Tell me. What is it that you wish?”

He had not been Levi before so as it is Levi that the dragon wishes to hear such an answer, he can only think of one thing now, having been granted a name, freedom-

“Tell me,” Levi says and is almost amused by the expression the dragon seems to make on hearing his own words echoed back to him, “Dragon. What is your name?”

The dragon is staring upon him intensely, gaze widening, before it-

Laughs.

Not a snort or a chortle, but a pleasant sound, warm, youthful. Perhaps Levi had been wrong… he of before had been wrong to discount the possibility that the dragon by his species’ standards is younger.

“This is the first time a human has so bluntly asked me what my name is. And even telling me their wish is to merely know that. But has it been such a long while that I need give it? Have I slept for enough of time that the world of humankind has long forgotten me, the hunter?”

Levi waits, listening to the dragon’s chatter, wanting to tell him to get on with it. Wondering if he should ask the dragon _to_ get on with it.

But the dragon’s mirth is brief and more seriously Levi is told- “My name is Eren. Eren Yeager. I suppose it will not do that I have given you but one name, Levi. Now what else shall you be called?”

Levi has no suggestions, having the one name is suiting him just fine.

Eren continues, “I think we shall do this if you agree to it. Since you had no name of your own, and I have granted your wish. You must now grant a wish of mine.”

Levi almost starts.

“Ah? What’s this yer talkin’ about?” Levi cannot imagine there is anything he possesses that the dragon would want, unless he really does mean to kill him, to eat him? Take his heart he supposes? Don’t dragons also do that sorta thing?

That beating in his breast… this beating in his breast presently-

If the dragon wishes for his heart then-

“Yes. Levi… Ackerman. Your full name is Levi Ackerman. You quite remind me of a knight I once knew of such a name, the Ackerman Line. They were knights. Like Lady Mikasa Ackerman who I made Queen, I shall make you into a King then.”

Levi stills.

He has no need for the honour of knights, the responsibility of kings.

He has known from them only one thing.

Their chivalry is dead, and none are just.

But perhaps that is why-

“I shall make you King, Sir Levi. As powerful and rich as the kings of old before I was put into slumber by a witch’s curse. She said to me I would only wake when a person with enough strength to wield that holy sword would appear before me again as Mikasa had. With how the land has changed, and the people, I'm guessing it had to have been hundreds of years already.”

Levi thinks, not understanding all the dragon… all that Eren says.

“You would put so much trust in me? I was just trying to kill you only moments before.”

“Yes, Sir.” 

Eren replies without missing a beat.

“As I was trying to kill you and we both could not succeed. I admire your strength, your conviction. I hope to take it for my own as I have bound you to me in this quest. So what say you? What do you think of my proposition?”

Levi considers it, looking to where the sword that’d scratched a few scales lies.

“If I refuse will you kill me?”

Eren looks offended.

“Do something so cowardly to he who has met me as courageously as you did in battle? Do you take me for some creature with no honour because I’ve slain your kind? To my understanding they were not your kin. Are all monsters in your eyes the same Sir? I will not kill you, whatever choice you make. But, if you choose me I shall lend you my abilities and my strength. Together, I am sure there will be none that can beat us!”

Levi knows this to be true, with Eren by his side he could take cities, nations, kingdoms.

He would not have a need ever again with a dragon at his side.

He envisions it, flying over this land he’s never seen much of, on the back of this dragon. Overlooking all, coming to possess all.

But there is only one thing he sees truly, that which he wishes to have, should Eren ask him what it is he wishes for now. That which he desires, that which he dreams…

Levi makes the choice he thinks he will regret less.

“Eren.”

The future that is being offered to him.

“Can you really do it? Make me King?”

Eren puffs his chest out proudly once again.

“I’m sure there will be times we will both doubt, for fate is a fickle thing, but I at this moment of time am certain of it! Please leave it to me! I will make you the most Brilliant King humanity has ever known! Even more Brilliant than the Ethereal Light of the Goddess Queen Historia!"

He has heard of such a Queen, in legends of long long ago, so this dragon really has lived a long while? Or did he know of her from legends just as he? Instead of asking, Levi replies.

“Then I will do it. Make me King… however I have conditions of my own. Should you fail to make me King I will definitely kill you.”

Eren draws back on such a remark, frowning.

“Please have a bit more faith in me. Did I not choose for you a most befitting name? ‘One that binds’? You and I are connected now, sealed in this pact. I will make you King, and you shall grant me my wish.”

Levi is taken aback, seeing he has made an error.

“What is that?”

“What is what Sir?” Eren replies all too pleasantly, too pleased at what has conspired between the two of them.

He does not seem to notice that Levi had failed to recognise it before.

“What is it that you wish?”

“Me?” Eren is a bit surprised at the question, once again so bluntly put- “You wish to hear what is my wish?”

Levi nods.

Eren is laughing at him in earnest now, not with the warmth as his laughter had been before, as he’d been amused. This is the laughter heard by fools, a smile shown to him but not for him, full of teeth- 

“Why, if I make you King it’s obvious isn’t it? You will be richer than any other being on heaven and earth, you will have that which all us dragons wish to possess.”

Levi’s breath stills within his body, as he knows exactly what that to be. Drawing breath, composing himself, trying not to shake, not to shudder, at that look Eren had given him. As if he will devour him, as if all his potential riches to be already had are at grasp.

It is obvious.

It had been a stupid question.

Levi knows that.

“Gold.”

Are Eren’s eyes that look upon him, this beast akin to him, truly. For as Levi stands before Eren, the future King, he takes that sword back in hand. But does not ready it, does not hold it to weild it. He approaches Eren, who lowers his head to Levi as Levi reaches out to him. Touching the top of Eren’s head, along it to the snout, caressing the scales there, looking back into that gaze-

“If that is what you wish, then I will not refuse you. So you want gold, Eren? Then I will give you all the gold that you want.”

Levi makes another choice.

One he knows with certainty he will never regret.

He will give Eren all the gold he comes to possess as King.

All but one thing, that which is golden, this alone he shall take as his.

These eyes on him, Eren’s radiant gaze, he will not give it up.

Levi is truly a King in Eren’s presence, as he covets that it is he truly wants.

“Eren.”

“Yes, Sir Levi?”

“Where to first?”

Eren pulls away from his hand and Levi’s fingers touch at the other, remembering the feel of scales beneath them and also thinking they’re not bad.

“Shall we return from whence you came? A start from zero is not unbecoming to your tastes is it?”

“I suppose not. I’d like to have a taste of that tea, those high lords are always sipping on. Won’t that be fine? You can have all their jewelry and I will have a hot drink.”

“Ah! What’s this you speak of that is hot? Will I be able to have a taste as well Sir?”

Eren lowers himself for Levi to crawl upon his back, testing if he can get a grip on anything.

Eren walks about to test as such. Levi doesn’t fall from his back while they’re on the ground but who is to say that will be the same when it comes to flight?

“I suppose it won’t be hot enough for you. What do dragons drink? Blood? Water?”

“The juices of fruit are quite delicious. Oh! And wine! Though Mikasa always warned about it, Historia was much more lenient…”

Levi gives a thoughtful ‘hn’ at all this.

“They are perfect drinks in the summer! Well, I suppose in the cooler seasons you can have them as well…”

Eren trails off and then without warning sets off, up into the sky, the once black night and light of the moon nearing the end as the dawn of morning rises past it. Levi sees it. The trees and the ground as it is taken by this white, growing light, breath gone from the ascent into the air and Eren, gliding over the land… steadily gaining speed and altitude… Levi’s grip loosens…

“Please hold on tight,” is what he thinks he hears before Eren twirls and tucking his wings to his body, dives to gain an even greater speed of before, hurtling them forward. Levi loses his grip, falling, caught, as Eren returns for him feeling him no longer on his back.

Eren carries him in his claws, surprisingly careful about it though Levi isn’t without bruise or scratch, and not from the battlefield it is, these abrasions.

The view is still nice from here, though he thinks it would have been more considerate to him if Eren would have gone slower considering this is his first time in the air and he isn’t a damn dragon.

He’ll have a talk about it to him later, about how dragons weren’t supposed to be damn brats.

Exactly how old is Eren again?

It’s not even by nightfall before they reach the fringes of the city he was property to, and had been sold to go to war for.

Eren hovers above the ground so Levi may leave his claws safely. Jumping to the ground with a heavy (more from his weight and not the distance) _thump_. Seeing Levi safe. Eren circles back, hoping not to be spotted. Is why they’ve landed in such a manner. Levi is curious to hear what sort of worries a dragon could have that they might need to make a battle plan before just charging in and torching the place-

Though he supposes not all deserve such a dreary end in that hellhole. One of many.

There’s a slight crash, much smaller than he’d been expecting, when he’d heard a crash at all… for a moment worry gnaws at him, had Eren overexerted himself? Was his vision not good as it'd been at night that he’d not notice how many big ass trees there are?

Levi can’t help his quickened step as he hurries to where he thinks Eren had landed…

He looks, looks- and cannot find him. Which is shit, and doesn’t make sense considering Eren is a big ass dragon-

There’s some rustling about the trees near him and he turns sharply, sword at the ready, drawn up in front of him, should there be guards or mercenaries in these woods… but it is only a boy, a young man garbed in layers of flowing robes that be a shade of blue and green, green and blue that Levi knows familiar, gold eyes he recognises with certainty. The boy’s hair is dark, messy as he pulls back the hood that’d covered his head. As if revealing his face to Levi will give him more indication than his sharp, beautiful eyes had.

“Well? How do I look? As you might say, not bad for not doing magic in such a long while don’t you think?”

Eren.

This person is-

“Won’t you put away your sword for the time being? Let us investigate the city before we make it yours.”

When Eren receives no reply.

“Sir Levi?”

As a dragon Levi had thought Eren magnificent and powerful, a creature of ruin, a monster, a beast. Just as he.

And here he is before him, not exactly as that, not revealed as that just yet.

But in this form Levi finds-

Eren is also very beautiful.

Horrifyingly, terrifying, devastatingly so.

Levi walks up to him, not lowering his sword, lest not having it at the ready will deter Eren from allowing Levi to do as he did before, and touch at his face. He skims his fingers over Eren’s cheek. Eren looks a bit alarmed at first, then disgruntled, and a little annoyed. All Levi has seen before but on a less softer face. Levi cups that cheek, stroking a thumb over it still, as he draws closer to Eren. Noting Eren to not have the same bulk as he had in his other form; this one to be slimmer in frame than to Levi who is hefty with muscle. All that being so, Eren is still taller than he-

“Are you done yet Sir? Is there not a lot of work that we must do? Shall we be going then?”

Levi draws his hand away, rubbing his fingers together again. Marveling not at hard scales this time but the softness of Eren’s skin. Levi wonders if the rest of him is just as soft. But thinks not, when he sees the heated edge of Eren’s look as Levi tells him, what Eren had been waiting to hear-

“Yeah. Let’s go, Eren.”


End file.
